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Hottermg m (Oregon 



BY- 



JWae Celeste $o*t 



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LOITERING IN OREGON 



■by- 



MAE CELESTE POST 



Copyrighted 1914 



rB2/ 



(Dedicated to the memory of my father, David 
Young Jones — for my mother's sake.) 

From Maine's rough coast and snow-bound forests, 
he came 

By foot, canoe, horse, and plodding ox, over un- 
trailed lands, 

And after all these years his journey ended here. 
He stepped from the door of Progress' palace car 
Into his last home, among the palms and roses 
And poppied fields that rim another ocean 
And decorate a fairer land. 

Dear old Daddy, sweetly sleep and rest, guarded by 
These steadfast hills, fir-crowned and evergreen. 
Forever sweetly sleep. 



FEB 24 1914 

©CI.A369109 
mi - 



\\A\<& 



LOITERING IN OREGON 



WHERE THINGS ARE REAL. 

Take my hand comrade and we will go, 
For the scarlet, and gold, the blue of the sunrise, 
The orange and black as he sinks back of the hills, 
The towering, swaying pine, the fern lining the 

dim trail, 
Are real, out on the ragged edges of things. 

The boom of the wave, the damp of the spray, 
The howl of the wind, the kiss of the sun, 
The song of the bird and the eagle's scream, 
Are real, out on the ragged edges of things. 

The brawn of the man, and the brown of his cheek, 

the rough beard on his chin, 
That deepens the rose that gleams thru the mesh 

of her tangled hair, 
The pound of his heart, and the clasp of her arms, 
Are real, out on the ragged edges of things. 

The echoing cry of the hungry beast, 
The pallor of fear when the mountain slides, 
The numb of the cold, the faintness from heat, 
The chill at the heart when the chum lies down, 
Are real, out on the ragged edges of things. 

The thrill of joy when a sail comes in sight, 
The helloo! long drawn, because you're alive, 
The weariness won by the long, rough climb, 
The gem in the rough, that you proudly hold, 
The sleep at the top where the sky leans down 
Are real, all real, out on the ragged edges of things. 

—3— 



Chapter I. 
ALL OVER OREGON IN 20 MINUTES. 

"I will loaf and invite my soul." — Whitman. 

I k'now that these pages are written recklessly, 
without regard to rules. (May I not make a cake 
with the stuff I have on hand, though famous cooks 
have laid down rigid rules?) I saw and felt these 
things with my own eyes and consciousness, so I 
must write them with my own pen, though it be a 
poor one; I must tell them with my own mouth, 
and I must open it myself. 

When I first came out here I was homesick. Oh, 
dear me, how I longer for a hot day, or a cold one, 
or a Hoosier cornfield, for a thunderstorm or a 
blizzard ! A cyclone would have seemed almost 
like a friend. I waited for winter to come, to close 
its white doors upon me and shut out the verdant 
hills. Along in February, when I found there was 
no real truly winter, I waited for spring. In July 
I found that spring had passed by unknown — so 
calmly and evenly do the seasons blend one into the 
other. 

Then one day I met a grand-daddy-long-legs, and 
I have felt better ever since. 

We know where you are by the particular per- 
fume you affect. 

You are gray, you are smelly, you are crawly; 
and everywhere we go, from Minnesota to Louis- 

—4^_ 



iana, over the mountains to Oregon, we find you 
straddling aimlessly about, still hunting for the cows, 
and telling that a warm day is to come. Friend of 
my childhood, to thee I sing. 

And, loitering about, as I am sure to do, always 
taking my pencil and my soul with me, I met a 
sunflower. 

He leered at me, across the whitewashed pickets, 
His brown face and yellow bonnet just as fresh 

and gay 
As when forty years ago I played with clothespin 

dolls 
Beneath his shade on Minnesota's trackless plains — 
A little barefoot child in gingham apron and freck- 
les brown. 
Today he mocks my whitening hair and lines, 
And signs that number off the years ; and then he 
Brings to me the prairie scent, and blue flax flower ; 
The "cool-cool" of the prairie chicken, the lessening 
Carol of the lark, and a glimpse of the red-epau- 

letted blackbird, 
And the wild, weird cry of the loon at night, hidden 
In the pathless swampland ; of the awful days when 
the 

Cruel Sioux murdered and burned; of the black 
cloud 

And the terrible wind, when the storm god raged 

And his lightnings split the humid air and leveled 
the sod cabin — 

The blizzards' biting blasts that blended nights with 



Days of cold and hunger, and dread fear for the 

absent ones; 
Of the day when the baby brother came, and the 

mother went away; 
Of the other day when the black cat died, and the 

gray hen brought forth her peeping brood; 
So you, too, of the familiar things have followed 
Me, and greet me here, in the shadow 
Of Sierra's jagged walls, and smile and bow, 
And with your long stems stir up the stagnant 

waters of the past. 
I am pleased to meet you, happy scalawag — flower 

of the sun. 

Now I am content, for with the assurance of my 
friends, grand-daddy-long-legs and gay old sun- 
flower that this was a good place to be at, I have 
settled down, and there are faint signs of webs be- 
ginning to grow upon my toes. 

My first stroll was up the hills to the city park 
of Portland. I climbed — but every breath of that 
balsam-laden air was so refreshing, and the soft 
green of the lawns and golden brown with gaudy 
splotched scarlet of foliage that lined the pathway 
was so enchanting that I forgot the effort my limbs 
were making to hoist my body to the summit of the 
mou'ntainette that we call the City Park of Port- 
land ; and, before I had time to think of the effort 
there lay before me such an unrivaled scene that I 
never did awaken to a consciousness of weariness. 
It is impossible for pen to describe the scene — 
great fantastic piles of brick and stone, temples of 



Mammon, homes of the rich — palaces ; homes of the 
poor — cunning cottages (yes, here the poor have 
homes) ; religious looking spires, officious looking 
skyscrapers; piles of red brick that send out great 
waves of intellectuality; woven among these build- 
ings stately firs and spreading forest trees, a thread 
that still holds the metropolis to the primeval forest ; 
stretches of green lawn — the plazas — where the old 
and young may play. A great city split in two by 
the placid Willamette, and then bound together 
again by woven iron bands ; beneath these swaying 
highways, riding the jade-green waters, are the 
ships, "come up out of the deep" — three and four- 
masted windjammers, their sails furled like brown 
rolls of parchment that could tell tales of seas and 
climes and peoples in the ragged ends of the earth ; 
smart, trig steamers — you know they move on sched- 
ule time by the look of them — they are masters 
of the voices of the deep ; rowboats, sailboats, impu- 
dent little tugs and launches that splutter like an 
angry old woman out of breath ; houseboats moored 
along the mill-lined, log-fringed shore that has a 
finishing trim of parallel bars of shimmering steel, 
kept shining by the ceaseless roll of Commerce's 
wheels. 

Away to the east above a gray string of clouds 
rises that snow-spangled monument to the everlast- 
ingness of things — Mount Hood, whose glittering 
ice fringes are ever dissolving and dripping down 
from her glistening crags and cloven sides to fur- 
nish drink to bird and wandering brute and the 



children of men. Between the river and the snow- 
draped peaks are the foothills in all the wondrous 
shades of greens and grays, purples and irridescent 
hues, loaned them by distance, mist and mischievous 
tricks of sun and cloud and wind, who play upon the 
view, an ever-changing game. 

Although filled with the emotion that such gran- 
deur feeds, in sight of food and fuel for millions, 
my heart feels a heaviness for the thousands of 
women and children who toil, pale and hungry, with 
cold fingers, in damp cellars and unsanitary dens ; 
men who grind their noses on the rough stone 
of necessity, disfiguring themselves that their chil- 
dren may eat and their wives may be clothed. I 
close my eyes and in the silence I beseech the Source 
of Knowledge to be shown how and in what way 
these broad acres may be made to feed and these 
gigantic forests to warm and house the multitude. 
Millions may be comfortable in this great empire 
with that which today is waste, and, unnoticed, 
returns again to the elements. 

Close to me stands the beautiful statue of Sac- 
ajawea, the magnificent squaw who helped guide 
and protect the explorers of this country, when the 
Oregon rolled and heard but the sound of "its own 
dashings." 

Of all things! I rub my eyes and look; I pinch 
myself and look again — yes, it is ! That bronze 
squaw lays down her bronze baby, covers it with 
the bronze blanket, gives it a nice little pat, and 



then walks over to me ! Holding out her hand, 
she says : "I am Sacajawea. Come, I will show the 
white woman many things, and she will write to 
the tired and hungry and they will come." And as 
she spoke there came out of the perfumed air 
shadows of Bryant, Lewis, Clark, Astor, g-reat 
crowds of hunters and trappers and blanketed 
braves. I was surprised and delighted. I am very 
fond of "shades," and I said, "Pleased to meet you, 
Sacajawea"; and then I said to Bryant — for I 
thought he would know me, for I had recited 
"Where Rolls the Oregon" — I said, "Just listen, 
Mr. Bryant ! Hear the screech of the whistle, the 
rumble of wagon wheels, the hum of the electric 
and grinding roar of the steam cars ; hear the honk- 
honk of the auto, and the tinkle of the biker's bell ; 
hear the laugh of the thousands, the groans of the 
few, and the pipe of the newsboy. Those wild 
dashings are outdone now — they cannot hear them- 
selves, and the huge swells of the great liners drown 
them out." 

But before he answered me, and though I would 
have visited with them longer, the squaw led me 
alo'ng the trail to higher ground. "Come, see the 
city below. There are three hundred thousand souls 
— homes, churches, schools, cars, lights. See the 
snow on yonder mountain. The white man has 
brought it down through miles of iron pipe, pure 
as the dew. See the soft pink skin of the women ; 
see the snowy linen on the lines to dry, this water 
is so pure and soft ; 'no typhoid germs live in it ; no 



lime to weigh down the legs and cause aches in the 
white man's back. See the mills — hundreds of men 
earning — grinding the flour, making the lumber, 
paper, cloth, cement. See the ships — hundreds of 
men loading the lumber and flour, unloading tea 
a'nd sugar and silk — all earning. See the new 
houses — carpenters, masons, plumbers, painters — 
earning. See the new streets — men earning, for 
they must cut down the hill and fill the valley, lay 
the paving stones, and the city must pay. See the 
new bridges ; see the new schools, churches and 
hospitals ; see the libraries ; see the play-yards for the 
childre'n. 

"Come, I will show you more, for this is a great 
land and room for the tired white sisters. This is 
a lumber camp. In all these houses live men who 
are earning. See the children play and the women 
sit on the doorstep and smile with red lips. 

"Come ! This is a mine — coal to burn. See the 
cabins — look in : the women cook ; see, on the table, 
bread, potatoes, meat, great bowls of berries and 
thick cream — plenty, plenty. See over yonder the 
long reach of green-gray marshland. Look closely, 
for the wealth hides in the mosses — thousands of 
acres of cranberries. See the women and children 
and some of my people gather the berries, glisten- 
ing red jewels that they change for money. See 
overhead flocks of wild geese and ducks, sport for 
the hunter and a treat for the family. 

"Come, there is more. See the rivers, the Wil- 
lamette, Columbia, Yamhill, and men fish with the 

—10— 



nets ; and in that red building perched over the water 
they can the luscious red flesh of salmon, and that 
ship slipping up beside will carry it to the end of 
the world. There are other men who fish — they 
catch small things — crawfish, and they earn two, 
four, and six dollars in a day. Then there on the 
beach are men i'n long boots. They gather clams, 
oysters, crabs, shrimps. 

"Come, we must hasten. This is a country of 
many miles. Where there were lumber camps last 
year, today, see, they cut cordwood and bolts for 
the factories. See the women and children in the 
tents and the cabins, happy and free — no rent, no 
gas bill, no fuel to buy; the water gushes for them 
from the hillside. Smell the sweet scent of the bal- 
sam. See the young man — the mother brought him 
here; he leaned on her shoulder. The dandelions 
were blooming then — like stars they bespattered 
the grass ; then he coughed — coughed ; the mother's 
face paled, and the boy wiped blood from his lips. 
Today the blackberry hangs ripe over the fallen 
log, and the boy walks with a quick step, and says, 
'Hurry the dinner, mother; I have earned two dol- 
lars this morning, and I am as hungry as a bear V 
Such medicine is the balsam of the fir and the breeze 
of the hills. 

"Now I will show you something. There is 
nothing like this in any country. See the pink shoots 
crawling out of the ground like angleworms ; see 
them crawl up the strings and run along the wires 
and hang out their millions of little green ruffled 

—11— 



petticoats, and through all the warm air is a per- 
fume that brings visions of a brown jar in your 
mother's cellar — oh, yes, an odor of hops ! See the 
great steamer stop at the landing and five hundred 
men, women and children spread out on the sand ; 
they climb into' the waiting wagons and men take 
them into the fields to gather the hops. Wait ! This 
is only one boat, one day at one landing. Every day 
from steamer and steam car and electric stations 
streams of people, thousands, thousands ! And then 
there are not enough to gather the hops. 

"Come, back to the springtime, and I will show 
you level fields, where the women and children 
gather berries — strawberries, raspberries, gooseber- 
ries, currants, loganberries, blackberries. They live 
in the tents and the childen play, fat and happy. 
Then comes the time to gather the apples — great 
bloges that grace the tables of kings — and pears, 
peaches, plums, cherries, prunes. All these must 
be planted, sprayed, pruned, packed, shipped, canned 
and dried and shipped again, a'nd men do the work, 
and the owners pay and the women and children 
help, and eat, and wear warm shoes and live in their 
own homes in the winter, and long for the harvest 
days to- come, for this is the playtime. 

"Now we will go to the foothills. Here are the 
vineyards ; a'nd again we see women and children 
at work, and hundreds of men. Now we follow 
the trail over the mountains. We meet groups of 
people; some hunt in the hills, some catch trout in 
the mountain brooks; others wind over the rough 

—12— 



way to play on the seashore, there to live in the 
spray and the ozone, to breathe in the vastness, to 
catch the exultation of the ceaseless billowing of 
the waters. Then we cross the long row of hills 
and come out on the plateaus, golden with wheat, 
surging waves, billowing, rolling. There is bread 
for the world in this shipless sea. Iron monsters 
roar and travel round and round the fields and pile 
up the grain in sacks ready for the mills. There 
are fields of barley, wheat, oats, rye ; oases of al- 
falfa. God leaves the snow on the hills and man 
trains it down into his fields. Immense herds of 
cattle — see the horsemen circling — droves are com- 
ing this way, fat, sleek steers ; slowly they wind 
down the trail to the valley. We follow out on 
the Peninsula to the red acres of buildings — new 
packing houses. It is six o'clock. See the hundreds 
of brawny men leaving the gates, tin buckets on their 
arms that were filled with food in the morning when 
they kissed the wife and baby good-bye. 

"Come, yet more will I show you, white woman : 
Quarries — marble, granite ; mines where they find 
the silver and gold, and gems — opal, topaz, copper 
and lead, iron, coal — they have only entered the 
outer walls of the fabulous jewel-lined hearts of 
these sublime hills, temples of the god of riches, 
on whose sides graze the sheep and goats, softly 
calling to the little ones that wobble by their sides. 
In a pasture, emerald and sparkling with the dew 
of the morning, stands a bay stallion, sending out a 
lordly call to the dam who fondles his twenty-five 

—13— 



thousand dollar offspring, and arches her neck in 
pride, for in all the world there is none like this. 
Even Kentucky's bluegrass-fed racers are no finer. 

Across the field on the hillside against the rough 

rock wall 
Stands tossing his horned head as he listens to the 

call 
Of his mother-part, a monster spotted bull, 
Each part of his mighty body developed in the full 
Of Nature's glorious perfection. 

"And his offspring dot the hills and plains of this 
vast country, and the judges have tied a blue ribbon 
on his shining horns. 

"Down in the valleys live the women and children 
in their own homes, with their own gardens and 
chickens and bees. These people gather the walnuts 
that grow nowhere like this; everywhere grow the 
potato, cabbage, celery, bea'ns — everything to eat. 
Your sisters need not hunger nor thirst nor go 
naked or cold. 

"Now, white woman, nowhere have you seen 
slums, sweatshops, nor tottering tenements; but 
everywhere broad acres, room for thousands, and 
sweet waters and cubic miles unnumbered of ozone, 
the health of the nation." 

"Coming back to the valley, we hear music, and 
the streets are filled with children wreathed in roses ; 
banners float in the balmy air, and men and maidens 
shower the streets with roses — red, white, pink and 



yellow — five million roses a day for six days; they 
strew the streets, cover the horses and carriages — 
roses, roses everywhere. The people feast on fruits 
and drink the glorious waters from the hills, and 
shout a'nd song express the free joy of their being 
because they live. 

"This is the 'Carnival of Roses !' This is the City 
of Roses ! Write quickly, white woman, and tell 
the white sisters, the tired, hungry sisters of the 
Eastern cities, of the great opportunities in this new 
country. I, Sacajawea, say to you, write!" 

She picked up her bronze baby and took her stand, 
where for ages she will watch the development of 
the valley. 

I was somewhat rattled, after all this dodging 
from sea to river, and jumping from mountain peak 
to wooded valley, and the strange experience of 
changing seasons in a minute — Spring to Fall, and 
Summer to Winter. I thought at first it was a 
dream ; but for weeks I have loitered since, and 
questioned, and find it all as she showed me from 
the park, and much more ; for I found by talking 
with women that many of them owned the fields 
where they earned their first dollar. Women lived 
happy and comfortable raising chickens and tur- 
keys or bees and they got their start earning at 
healthy outdoor work that is not as hard as the 
mechanical work in factories. 



-15- 



CHAPTER II. 
ALONG WITH THE WOOD CHOPPERS. 

Did you ever go into the woods to camp? and 
the day was fine ? and the earth was dry, and the 
shades called you in cool tones? Then you un- 
packed and leave things scattered on the ground 
and strung on branches every which way, and go 
to bed trustingly, leaving the arranging for the 
next day — (never put off 'til — no I won't say it.) 
In the night the gentle patter on your woven roof 
keeps time to a lulling song of unbalanced clouds, 
and ariel fountains broken loose. 

You rise in the exceeding early gray, and get 
breakfast with the water squshing between your 
cold toes, then you notice the oilcloth shelter to 
your little stove is bellying down in the middle, and 
you think you are wise in tipping out the water 
gathered there, and so you are, but you are ignorant 
of the perversity of an oilcloth bag filled with 
water, so you get a stick and poke in the right place 
to dump all that water adown the only warm streak 
in your whole carcass. 

The sun pours down a shower of golden sparks 
and the grass and towels and lillies and stockings 
begin to steam and you rush off to a cool and shady 
dell. While you are gone some enterprising blue- 
jays eat up your eggs, and a fussy bee takes pos- 
session of the tent. Tired, you flop down and 
watch the bee — 'round and 'round he flies, and then 



-16- 



pounces upon a common fly, grabs him and stings 
him to death. Then he sits down upon the ridge- 
pole and balances himself with hind feet and tips 
of his wings, proceeds to pull off the victim's legs 
and wings and drops them down upon my month- 
old Journal, then he rolls the balance of the poor 
little black corpse into a tight little wad and covers 
it over with a sticky mess ? canned meat for next 
winter. 

And did you ever pick blackberries in the woods ? 

You start early and boldly enter the inviting gal- 
leries and wandering arched ways ; there you meet 
three bald cows, they hold their breath long and 
blow it out fiercely at your tiny poodle that pat- 
tered along ahead of you, in a joyous voyage of 
discovery. The cows have also discovered a white 
and woolly thing, the like of which they had never 
seen before. 

They won't turn back, so you have to for the 
path is narrow. 

Down another trail you wander, clinging tightly 
to the tin bucket (still empty) dodging the branches 
and drenching your garments with leaf-hoarded 
dew. You see ferns and pink, white and purple 
blossoms, but pass them by, for today you are after 
berries. There is nothing just like the lure of the 
wild berry. Aloft it holds its signal light of crim- 
son, then crawls along the ground coyly hiding 
from your view. 

Heeding not the briar or hidden pitfall, nor gar- 



-17- 



ments torn, nor life blood shed through long thin 
scratches, bravely trudging over log-strewn path- 
ways for weary miles. Now and then a few green 
promises of ripened fruit tinkle against the bottom 
of your pail of shining tin. Arriving home between 
the dark and daylight, you proudly show a scant 
handful. You could not sell them for a copper cent. 

One day after a long tramp, you sit down upon 
a log to rest. After sitting a half hour resting 
serenely you change your position and notice, cutely 
coiled beside you two smooth, black-bodied, golden- 
striped and beautiful, perfectly silent snakes. They 
do not say anything; they do not move — you do. 

On your way home you come across some wood- 
choppers. After your experience of sitting on a 
log, this time you sit upon a stump. 

My ! but it is interesting to watch these fellows 
split the great bolts of wood. Little by little the 
iron wedges are forced into the yellow wood and 
cling ! cling ! clang ! clang answers the wedges to 
each blow of the heavy sledge, and the great bolt 
pops open with a sound like the cutting of a ripe 
watermellon, only more of it, and the smell of the 
disturbed balsam is something to be remembered. 

You stay a little longer, and yet a little longer, 
but now the cool of the evening comes and you 
must go, positively must go, but you don't, for the 
part of your gown that you are sitting on clings 
fast and tight to the pitchy stump, for these newly 
sawn stumps are generous with their balsam and 



-is- 



exceedingly adhesive. Never more will you sit 
on a stump, and never more will you wear the pink 
gingham gown. 

But the men are going to fall a tree and you 
linger yet a little longer. A strange feeling of im- 
pending disaster enfolds you. 

Timber ! Loud and long the call, like the warrior's 
cry of old ; 

The great tree shudders from root to wavering- 
crest ; 

The crashing of his great body, against his brothers 
as he sways, 

Fills the air with wild screamings. 

Now you trudge slowly tentward for you have 
seen a sight and heard sounds, that your children 
and their children's children will never see nor hear. 
For like the Indian and buffalo, the firs are passing, 
passing. Now you make some tea, part uncolored 
Japan and part fir needles and a few fern leaves 
that flicked into your bucket, as you packed the 
water a half mile, and up hill too. 

The fire burns merrily, and the supper is delicious, 
(potatoes and bread with the aforesaid tea), and 
here comes Henessy to get acquainted. He is the 
lone Irishman, and follows lightfooted Alene and 
Ruth from the camp above, and Togs, the black 
dog, who being large, sniffs disdainfully at my 
small pet — and Teddy, and Rob and the Martyr 
(he has a boil, a long scratch and a pounded shin) 
and Scoty the Fletcherizer, and Dad, the parent of 



the Martyr, and Babe, Gen's lover (she named 
him.) 

Are there any cougars or bears in these parts, you 
ask, and Henessy drops the lid of a laughing eye. 
"You see me here," which we take as evidence with- 
out question, and scent a story of experience in the 
jungle, for Henessy has seen service. 

"Are you married, Mr. Henessy?" politely asks 
Alene. 

"No-o," he drawls, "Wonse I was goin' to" (an- 
other whiff of story), "She was a Chiny woman, 
about half Chiny, but I changed me moind." 

"Oh, my, a Chinese?" 

"Yep," "but you see I changed me moind. No 
Chiny women nor lions for me. That's why I'm 
here." 

Just at this point the poodle ran up and barked 
dreadfully at Henessy. Of course, I apologized and 
picked her up. She weighs three and a quarter 
pounds. 

"Oh, mam, I am not afraid of it, mam. I can 
tame a dog in the worst stage of its vexation." 

It is almost too bad that we have so few Henessys. 



-20— 



CHAPTER III. 

HOPS. 

So you are a hop-vine. I watched last spring, 
when you came crawling out of the mud, like a long 
pinkish, purplish angleworm, and you waved your 
brown nose about, and sniffed the earthy atmos- 
phere. 

I thought you didn't know "where you were at," 
but you knew your business all right. You just 
straggled about until you found a string and then, 
"watch me," and up you went, — up, up, over and 
under and round about, like a boy shinning up a 
tree for a bird's nest. 

Then you found a wire — long stretches of wire — 
and you hung out your millions of be-ruffled green 
petticoats, and there they swayed and swished in 
the wind, sending out a pungent scent, that re- 
minded me of a brown jug in mother's cellar, which 
in a mysterious bubbling way, contributed to our 
supply of daily bread, and great round-bellied bar- 
rels that the same shaped sort of man, topped 
with a red face, rolls off his wagon every morning 
at the back door of the tavern across the way. 

Now I walk down between the trellised rows; 
you reach out long green hands that rasp me like 
a bearded lover's cheek. No garden of rare roses, 
nor field of waving tasseled corn, but must covet 
your peculiar graces. 



—21- 



Now, "under the dim September sun," I see hur- 
rying forms, burdened with great baskets, a demo- 
cratic crew, of every color, every creed, straggling 
in from all the way stations of this old world's 
social life. We hear a chorus chanted in every 
tongue, "Hop weigh," and "wire down !" and tired 
and soiled, we retrace our steps down long rows 
of ugly posts, now stripped of your clinging loveli- 
ness, clutching in our swollen hands a small green 
ticket that calls for fifty cents. 

And now you lie tangled and braided, knitted 
and twisted with your kind, and, 'tis strange, you 
are tangled in some mysterious way with politics, 
morals and finance. 

And all winter you will sparkle and make a good 
fellow of yourself, and bubble over queer old 
"steins." 

I am dining with a friend, cozy and warm. Faint- 
ly we hear the pounding surf of the Pacific, and 
moaning winds hover in the firs. My friend is 
lonely and she tells me that her husband is in New 
York selling hops. 

So? Your straggling vine has crept across the 
continent? and under the Anheuser-Busch? So? 

Here are a few figures (I don't like statistics 
myself) from the Oregonian of August 17, 1913. 
Other papers also advertised and many small grow- 
ers hire only neighbors or overflow : 

Wanted — 12,000 hop pickers. 
Wanted — 200 hop pickers. 



-22- 



Wanted — 1,000 hop pickers. 
Wanted — 500 hop pickers. 

Seventy-five hop pickers and five other adds that 
did not state the number wanted. 

These adds state that shacks, tents, water, fruit, 
potatoes and wood will be furnished, free. Cheap 
rates, special trains. Hurrah, boys! let's go. And 
we did, and we did pick hops, and we did get a 
cent for a pound for doing it, and had more fun, 
and got more dirt on us, and ate more food than 
we ever did in the same length of time in our lives 
before. 

One night we heard a sudden cry on the still 
air, "light the glim ! light the glim !" "Wat's eatin' 
you? roars another voice. "I've stepped in the 
liver," the weird voice pleadingly whines. It de- 
veloped that the liver for breakfast had been floured 
and placed in a flat pan near the door, to facilitate 
an early breakfast. The late carouser, sneaking in 
through the dark, had stepped in the pan. The next 
day my little dog was busy all day burying it. 

O, those four boys were campers, all right. 
They brought home a chicken, (in a hop camp there 
is an unwritten law that no one shall ask questions 
in such matters,) and prepared the same for break- 
fast, and in order to prevent such an accident as 
befell the liver, they sat it out on a high stump. 
Now it so happened that a wily widow was camped 
close to the stump and after these boys left for 
their evening stroll, she and two others, just as 
wily, and just as hungry, cooked the chicken and 
ate it, carefully put the bones back on the stump. 
There were no questions asked about that either, 



-23— 



but there were questioning eyes. Widows are good 
campers also. 

. One family of seven took $300 out of that field, 
and another of four $125. When I settled up my 
account I had 17 cents left, and when I got back 
to Portland I had to borrow six bits to pay for 
some hop gloves that I had worn out. But I do 
loaf so, and I really do like stale bread. It was a 
jolly two weeks. I am going again. 

Oh, of course, you get wet sometimes; of course 
it is hot, but then so there are tears and smiles, 
pains and joys everywhere. 

It is a great place to study human nature. One 
evening we had a great bonfire, and one girl sang, 
" School Days" three times, — she had to, to get 
the notes all in. There was a great bunch of us 
around that fire, and not one of them came out 
there to pick hops, unless it was the Wiley Widow, 
and she frankly admitted that the did. 

One lady and her three daughters stated many, 
many times that they came just for the outing, and 
every morning they passed my tent with a lantern, 
so to get to the field early enough to hear the birds 
sing. They were picking like sixty when I crept 
down there about 8 o'clock. 

On the day we left the mother spoke of papa, 
how pleased he would be that they were coming 
home. "What is your husband's business ?" I asked. 
".Oh," she said, "My husband is a retired capitalist." 

I met Indians, Negroes, Chinese, Japs, Dutch, 
Irish, but never an I. W. W.. I met Democrats, 
pretty girls, interesting men, red haired women, 
white horses, but never a W. C. T. U. Oh, well ! 



-24— 



CHAPTER IV. 

AN EVENING VISION ON THE TUALATIN 
RIVER. 

I would try to tell you of a wonderful vision — 
a vision that the Divine exalted, glorified beyond 
anything", that I in my wildest fancy had believed 
possible for mortal eye to see or mortal mind to 
comprehend — and since I have wondered, if for the 
moments which it endured that I was not let loose 
from the mesh of entangling aching flesh, just long 
enough to make me ashamed of repining — of tak- 
ing the price of bacon as the finality of life's 
economic endeavor, for I had been a-marketing 
to the nearby village and was aweary, aweary from 
the long walk through sloshing mud, aweary from 
the endeavor to make two-bits buy hour-bits' worth 
of troublesome bacon. Aweary from the weight of 
the parcel and the gray weather, for it was a day 
whose gray edges flapped against the ragged hori- 
zon of a gray world, and damp, straggling strands 
of the gray flipped my face and chilled my fingers. 

Below me now was a gray lake spanned by a 
gray bridge, there was a green field yesterday 
where this great lake spread out so solemnly today, 
whose waters tapped, tapped against the spiles of 
the bridge so insinuatingly that I was almost tempt- 
ed into believing that it was inviting me to lie down 
and rest beneath its gentle, murmuring depths. 

I tried once to tell of the beauties of an angle- 

—25— 



worm, and out of our much-praised vocabulary of 
300,000 words, there were none that would tell you 
exactly of the marvelous wonders of the lowly 
thing, — but I know that you can hear the last chord, 
when David sang of the "green pastures," and the 
"snow-like wool," and how the "Hoar-frost was 
scattered like ashes," I know, that your heart beats 
in unison with Solomon when he tried to tell us 
of the beauties of his sweetheart's lips, and breasts, 
and rounded neck like a "tower of ivory." And 
the ardor of his love, tho' the words are vacant 
things. I know that you have the understanding 
in your inner self, and though I was dumb like 
Paul, astounded by the glory of it, I rattle on like 
John, when he saw the Heavenly City — knowing 
that you can build the palace of beauty upon those 
unpolished cobble stones of human words of which 
I can only build a rude foundation of the wondrous 
vision. 

Slowly a golden light slipped upon me, so slowly 
and silently it came that the world was all aglow 
before I realized it. 

My first sensation was one of cowering, or kneel- 
ing, of abject unworthiness for not noticing the 
glorious change from settling gray to floating gold, 
pure gold, rippling, rolling gold, the sky a deep sea 
of gold, rolling back away behind the sun and stars 
— farther yet than the throne of the eternal one, 
pouring, dripping gold. 

Transparent as the gauze of the flimsy mist, 
solid as the nuget from the rock-lined hill, just out- 



-26- 



lined by a zig-zag line of turquoise lighted by the 
last sweeping ray of the evening sun — it settled 
deeper, deeper into the lake — until it was a golden 
mirror reflecting golden forest, fern and grass blade, 
it dripped from the needles of the fir — it painted 
a golden arabesque against the background of a 
golden curtained world. 

Out of an indefinite and golden horizon to the 
eastward loomed a mountain pale rose deepening 
to a glowing crimson, with opals dribbling down 
the folds of the drapery loaned by the winter sun- 
set ; then suddenly, directly above this, transformed 
snow spangled pile eternal, came the rainbow, 
faintly, a stripe in the golden heavens, then widen- 
ing, ribboning, curving, brightening, shimmering, 
shaking out its seven colors in gorgeous harmony ; 
earthward it came, until it slid into the growing 
things just a little fluttering change, just a dabbling 
in the golden-green of a fir, on one bank and the 
golden-red of a maple on the other, then widened, 
and curved and ribboned, sifted into the waters of 
the lake, a perfect circle of divine arrangement. 

Oh, the glory of it. 

Then the waters ceased their lazy tapping and 
the birds folded their fluttering wings and there 
was a silence, because of the glory of it. 

And the bronzed and reddened leaves of the 
maples ceased their idle flitting, and there was no 
movement on the face of the waters, because of 
the glory of it and my body shrivelled and shrunk 
away and left my soul naked and alone, awed by 
the glory of it. 



—27- 



CHAPTER V. 
POULTRY RAISING IN WASHINGTON CO. 

Said the old hen of Michigan to the young hen 
of Oregon, "It is a long time between bugs." This 
of course by chicken wire-less. 

And it seems after due thought and financial 
embarrassment that the whole chicken business from 
A to Z resolves itself into a question of bugs. The 
hen of high degree, backed by gold medals and 
silver cups, or my dear old dominick that lays about 
six eggs a month, the darling downy chick that 
cuddles, the nasty little leghorn cockerel that fights 
all, all have the bug habit. You train them to live 
on high-class, commercial food, clean, warranted, 
pasteurized, sterilized — I say you get them trained to 
this food and then just as they are about to gradu- 
ate, perfectly cured from the bug habit, they die, 
peacefully of course, — but they die. 

You civilize them, Christianize them, caponize 
them, and educate, you bar their feathers wide or 
narrow at your will, grow feathers on their legs, 
or shave them off again, yellow skin, or blue legs, 
big combs, or white earrings, they are just like In- 
dians, — turn them loose and they will go straight 
back to the bug-chasing, worm-devouring, maggot- 
eating days of their darkest and most ancient be- 
nightedness. I talked and argued with them about 
it, but they looked at me and said, "bugs." 

Eggs were 50 cents a dozen and going up, and 

—28— 



these hens of mine stopped laying, because the bug 
market was closed. 

I needed money, the eggs would bring it, and I 
thought and planned until finally I contrived the 
greatest scheme in the annals of poultry- farming. 

I would raise bugs to bring more eggs to hatch 
more chicks to eat more bugs, et cetera, et cetera. 

I took the Poor Relation into my confidence and 
he at once fell in, and went into a little inside pocket 
of an inside pocket and brought forth a dime, (that 
I never supposed he had) and said, "I will swamp 
my all in this venture." He said it so solemnly 
that it almost made me cry, and outside the little 
chicks said, "Cheep, cheap, cheep." I was afraid 
it would hurt his feelings and I shoo'ed them off 
the porch. This was the beginning of my success. 

I bought two pounds of liver and hung it in the 
sun, and placed boxes of sand below. Then came 
a blue fly, the most gorgeous of his kind, then two, 
then five, then seven, units, tens, hundreds, thou- 
sands. 

They deposited their eggs on the liver. In 24 
hours there were maggots, fat, delicious morsels. 
It would make any hen's bill water to see them. 
They grew so fast and got so heavy that they fell 
ofr* into the sand, which by a mechanism I had 
arranged, swayed gently and shook them out into 
a box. They were there sorted and graded into 
three separate boxes, a pink, blue and green one 
with ribbons to match. In the blue box I put such 



-29— 



maggots, as I considered fit for breeders, in the 
pink boxes the maggots that were to be fed daily, 
and in the green boxes those that were to be fed 
next winter. I find order and system is a great 
thing. 

So the business grew. The orders from friends 
and neighbors came in until I could not handle the 
mail alone, so added a clerk and two stenographers. 

I attended personally to the rearing and propagat- 
ing of the flys and maggots, and the hens began to 
lay. I kept an accurate account and you can figure 
it up for yourself For everybody knows, or should 
learn, before they go into the poultry business that 

1 hen lays 1 egg per day. 

No hen lays 2 eggs per day. 

1 +2 = 3, therefore 

1 hen lays 3 eggs per day. 

So from my 50 plain hens I received dated and 
stamped, ready for market, 150 eggs per day, or 
a little better than 12 dozen. 

I had arranged to sell stock, 'allamagotted' stock, 
when a nosey person complained of the flies torment- 
ing his cattle. I was just ordering screens to keep 
them enclosed, when an auto snapping and snarl- 
ing stopped at my gate, and off climbed a very 
pompous individual. He leaned over my counter as 
far as he could. He was not as flat as the counter, 
and thus addressed me : "Madam, you are under 
arrest.'' "Arrest?" I screamed. "For what?" "I — 
"Never mind all that. You may explain to the court, 



-30- 



In the name of the law I arrest you for harboring 
a nuisance — under the impure food laws." I was 
speechless. I tried to call the Poor Relation. He 
was out helping my stenographers into our red and 
gold auto. My private telegraph instrument ticked, 
ticked, and I was too near fainting to answer the 
call, but it ticked so loudly and rapidly that I made 
one last effort, opened the door, and there was 
those scoundrels of half-grown Plymouth Rocks 
picking wheat off the porch, and I went out and 
Drought in four eggs. One was frozen and one was 
cracked. 

They do say that green bone is just as good as 
bugs. 

Now that I am awake I can tell you some facts 
about chickens. 

It is one of the biggest chances in the world for 
women to make a living in this Oregon state. 

The Plymouth Rocks of the dream are real. 
There were ten pullets in the lot. I saved them, 
they started to lay at Christmas and I received from 
50 cents, down to 25 cents per dozen for the eggs. 
I set the hens as fast as they became broody. I 
raised 102 young chickens. In July I sold the whole 
bunch, father, mother and children, for $49. 

The grandma hen cost me 50 cents, the setting of 
15 eggs 50 cents. I never kept account of the eggs 
the pullets laid, but it bought all the feed for the 
lot up to the time I sold them, and my groceries. 
Then I had the rest of the summer in quiet from 
their cheeping. Geese and ducks do fine, and tur- 
keys are worth their weight in gold. 

But they do admire bugs. 



-31— 



CHAPTER VI. 

SILENT OCCUPATIONS. 

There is so much rush and roar about so many 
things, that we miss sight of greater ones, that are 
being accomplished every day, and like the under- 
tone of the orchestra, you will have to listen on 
purpose to hear it, but without it the music would 
be pretty flat. 

We see stringing out at the mouth of the rivers, 
what seems to be a part of a bridge or a fence. 
Come to find out it is a jetty, and it cost the gov- 
ernment of this great United States and the Port 
of Portland, or Nehalem or Coos Bay as the case 
may be, millions of dollars. There were used in the 
building of it hundreds of spiles, hundreds of ties, 
miles of steel rails, and billions of tons of rock. 

You sometimes may see a few men, who look like 
insects creeping about, barges moving to and fro. 
All is silent, all looks small and insignificant. The 
bay is so wide, the mountain wall so high, the surf 
on the bar rages so fiercely, the Pacific is so vast, 
that the jetty just seems to shrivel to a little ragged 
fence. And it is one of the triumphs of engineering 
skill, and makes possible the commerce of the sea. 

The rivers are lined with small boats, and two 
men stroll down to each one of them and silently 
they spread out, and cast their nets, leaving a long 
line of huge beads upon the water. In the morning 
they row silently to a shabby looking building 
standing on long legs in the water, and unload 
fish, as big as a ten-year-old boy. Pink-fleshed sal- 
mon. They are put into little round cans and ship- 
ped all over the world. The figures concerning this 

—32— 



industry may be obtained through the United States 
government or any publicity bureau. It is too big 
for me, but they tell me that it is one of the most 
valuable assets of the Western Coast. I know that 
I pay twenty cents a pound for salmon and that one 
fish weighed 23 pounds and the man that caught 
it got 43 that morning and there were many hun- 
dreds of men fishing, but I never heard a sound 
of it all. It made me tired to try and realize the 
magnitude of the business, though after I fried that 
one pound, and helped eat it, I felt strong, with a 
heart for any fate. 

The mountains are tunneled, the rivers dredged 
with only now and then a blast, silently the beauti- 
ful United States Mathloma, the Champoeg, the 
Columbia, ply up and down the Willamette, their 
great shovels spewing out tons of sand and remov- 
ing other obstructions of navigation, the busy little 
tender Salem puffing about carrying messages and 
materials. These boats are manned by picked men, 
college men, fine fellows they are, too; men with 
objects in life, men with histories, men who love 
their mothers, men with wives, and men with sweet- 
hearts, two or more, most always more. 

All the commerce of the rivers and sea is so 
great and so still that it is hard to comprehend it. 
Boats come into Portland and take out lumber 
enough to build a small town, flour enough to feed 
the people in it, in one day, and you don't hear a 
sound. 

There are hundreds of people travelling up and 
down the Coast, and we don't hear a thing about it, 
and sometimes if we try to tell them about it, they 
do not comprehend. I was in company with a school 
teacher, intelligent and cultured. I marveled at the 



-33- 



great tunnels on the P. R. & N. R. R. As we ap- 
proached I raved over it. "Just think of it," I said. 
"It is so long, so high, it cost so much, it took so 
many men to build it." Just then we entered its dark 
mouth, darker, darker it grew minute after minute, 
and just when we made up our mind that the train 
had started on a voyage of sub stratum discovery, 
heigh O, we came out on the other side of the 
mountain. 

"What do you think of it," I said. "Say some- 
thing, anything. Isn't it marvelous? Isn't it a 
masterpiece of engineering?" "Why, yes," said 
Miss Schoolma'am, "it seems to be a very good tun- 
nel." I looked out the window at the great moun- 
tain walls with the melted snow dripping down, 
and I never spoke to that schoolma'am again that 
day. And one day when I first came to Oregon 
I looked up and there loomed a great snow-capped 
mountain, clear-cut against the purple sunset sky. 
"Is that Mt. Hood ?" I asked a woman leaning over 
a little gate. "I guess it is," she said. "Oh, you 
are a stranger, too." "Oh, no, I am not," she em- 
phatically replied, "I have lived here seven years." 
I strolled down the street, humbled in spirit, and 
longing for a kindred soul. Didn't somebody say 
long ago something about "having ears and hearing 
not, and so forth, and so forth." 

There are some masterful things in this big state 
nevertheless, and notwithstanding. 

P. S. — Some of the men on the dredge boats have 
been known to get tangled up in the hop-vines that 
grow so plentifully on the river bottom lands. It 
seems that hops in more ways than one are a peril 
to navigation. Of course one industry always over- 
laps another. It cannot be helped. 



—34- 



CHAPTER VII. 
FOOT HILLS. 

One snowy day I walked four miles up and down 
over, and across and came at last to a little white 
tent in the woods, and dwelt there in, one young 
man, and he was glad to see me. 

Oh, those woods, dark pathways lead away off 
to somewhere. Dripping hazel arched the way, for- 
est that was there when came the first white man 
and patches of it are there still. 

There are kindly folk scattered about, and back 
in the hills are mysteries. 

There is one old house whose floor is marred 
by a dull stain, that is again shown upon its wall. 
Farther back was a log cabin. Its occupant, an old 
man nearly ninety, with long hair, tottering about 
these winding trails, guarding the wild strawberries 
from the depredations of the people. He is a strange 
appearing old fellow. Sometimes you will see him 
walking up and down a well trodden path in an 
obscure place. He won't sell the land. He would 
never let it be farmed. Sometimes he goes about 
with an old hymn book under his arm. He is talka- 
tive and friendly, but always as I looked at him I 
could see back of him in a smoky haze a gallows 
and a long, noosed rope, swinging and swaying 
in the breeze, and looking intently at it as though 
waiting a lean and hungry dog. 

Oh, there are tales of that hill, of buzzards that 



-35- 



circled round and round a compost heap, and of 
a strange still thing taken out of it. And of the 
quarrel on a summer day and another still thing, 
carried away, of a woman who sold her hair to get 
away. Of a bruised and mangled form, carried 
from a barn, and the still part of it brought back, 
and kept in a cement apartment, builded on pur- 
pose for it. 

There are dark canyons among those hills, and 
stealthy steps in the dark. Sixty years ago it was 
wild and far away, but the settlement is crowding 
back, still farther back, and some morning there 
will be wheat harvested where the buzzards circled. 

In the valley there is beaver dam and there they 
raise more onions than it would take to spoil the 
breath of all the pretty girls in the world. 

The young man that was so glad to see me that 
day, moved down on to this beaver dam, and spent 
the summer on the trail of the fierce and dangerous 
wire worm, and incidently raised four acres, or 
maybe eleven acres of green cucumbers, at least 
they were green at first. 

Now the young man planted, — no he plowed first, 
then he marked criss-cross lines — they looked pretty 
straight to me, but he squinted one eye, and said 
he didn't believe a "snake could crawl up 'em." 
There where each line crossed he dug a little hole 
and put a shovelful of black, vile smelling stuff, 
mixed with straw, into each one and covered it up. 
He said it would warm up the soil. 



-36- 



I was glad that he covered it up. 

Then he made a little line and put in some sprout- 
ed cucumber seed and they grew, and waxed green 
on the face of the land, and the next day they lay 
withered and dead. Again he planted. The man- 
ager of the big ranch said it was wire worms. 

Now the war was on. Having no bugle, nor no 
bugler to bugle it if he had, he whistled "Way 
Down South," or something. 

He armed himself with a trowel eight inches 
long by two inches wide. He wore blue overalls, 
and a wide straw hat. He carried a jack-knife, a 
nail, and two brass pants buttons in his hind pockets, 
and a hoe in one hand. Behind him at a respectful 
distance followed his mother and a poodle dog, and 
a baby turkey named Mose. Valiantly they fought, 
the young man hoed and sliced the yellow tough 
worms in two parts, the mother dug them out and 
laid them in the sun to dry. (I have a sneaking idea 
that they came to life again. They are very sly.) 

Now I come to the sad, sad part of this sad part 
of this sad tale. Poor Mose. He was the great 
hero. He trudged patiently about and grabbed 
worms by the tail and swallowed them raw. So 
earnestly did he follow up this policy that he died 
that night. Dear little brown Mose. How lonely 
we were, for he was a darling pet and slept every 
night in an old iron tea kettle safe from weasles. 

As the weather grew warmer the cucumbers grew 
strong enough to withstand the worms, and they 

—37— 



were picked, sorted, sacked and hauled to the Salter 
every day. Up and down the long rows trudged 
the pickets, piling the cool green colocky things into 
baskets. There were tons of them. Just think of 
tons of cucumbers. 

One of those pickers was a sorrowful old Jeremiah. 
"Howl," is no name for his woeful mourning. He 
would lean over the fence and tell the young man's 
mother how lonesome he was, and finally invited 
her to go to the village with him to celebrate the 
Fourth of July. Then he gave the young man a 
cigar. Things began right there. The young man 
eloquently pictured his mother, and the Jeremiah 
sitting on the edge of the sidewalk, eating peanuts 
out of one five-cent sack, and standing at the pink 
lemonade counter sucking the circus fluid out of 
one glass, thru two straws that sucked as one, and 
following the band up the street holding hands, 
and as the Jeremiah came up the lane he proudly 
announced, "There comes my mother's future step- 
husband." 

They say that foolishness is next to happiness. 

There were blue-green acres of onions, dark-red 
acres of beets, feathering acres of carrots, plummed 
acres of sweet corn, celery, beans, squashes, and 
great golden pumpkins ripened there on that curved 
piece of beaver dam. Around its border all sum- 
mer was a snowy bank of wild bloom, like a lacy 
border on a great piece of tapestry. Early rains 
came on and it was turned into a great lake of 

—38— 



still water, that reflected the willows on its scal- 
loped shore, and the pumpkins that were left on 
the field because of the early coming of the waters, 
floated about and lined up around the shore like a 
gigantic strands of golden beads. All winter they 
lay there, a gorgeous and novel picture. All winter 
the lake is the resort of wild ducks and geese, 
serving thus a double purpose. It is not every 
farmer that can turn his farm into a hunting resort 
in winter, but it is so in some parts of Oregon. 

Always will I long for that ranch, its level fields 
of grain and hay, woods and pasture, the beaver 
dam, the peaceful river gliding by, the spreading 
maples shading the ranch house, the pigs and chick- 
ens and turkeys, the horses and cows and goats, 
the fast filly, the old team, the little toad that had 
never had a vacation, the little turtle that looked as 
tho' he had never had any childhood, the owner, 
who was born there, "the mistress, moderately fair" 
who made the best Dutch cheese I ever ate in my 
life, and read of God on the green or golden maple 
leaves. 




—39— 



CHAPTER VIII. 
LOGGING. 

Of course, James, if you must have authentic 
statistics, you will have to go to the newspapers, 
the Commercial clubs and railroad booklets, and as 
I said James, the farther you go into them the big- 
ger they get until by the time you have read the 
literature of the P. R. & N. R, R. your head will 
just crackle, the figures of Oregon are so big. 

Why sonny, when they told me that a spruce 
stump on the hill was 13 feet across the top, 12 feet 
from the ground, I had in mind an old oak stump 
that stood beside the gate back home, that we 
used for a step when we laborously mounted Louise 
for a ride. (I could always ride any horse that 
ever walked. I don't say this to brag of my swift- 
gate either.) Well, coming back to the stump, I 
went up to look at it, and lo, behold it had a room 
inside of it as big as my bedroom; it had a door 
cut in the side, and was used for a chicken house. 
Some stump, eh? 

They took seventeen logs ont of the boom and 
sawed them into 60,000 feet of lumber and burned 
up the slabs. That much lumber would lay a board 
all along the trail to Bay City from Brighton. 

The loggers are a class by themselves. Sawmill 
men are alike everywhere, but Michigan has her 
French-Indian-Canadian loggers and Minnesota, her 
Lars and Andersons and Olesons. Oregon has her 

—40— 



own, made on purpose. If you meet a man with 
overalls "stagged" and a plaid shirt which he has 
a rain hat, or a straw hat, or none at all and his 
forgotten to tuck in — it is a logger. 

The widow told me about the loggers. They 
used to dig clams for her, and after a half dozen of 
them had dug for her she smiled and asked the 
one that delved today where the nice fellow was 
that dug her clams yesterday. He looked blankly 
at her, wiped his muddy hands on his muddy over- 
alls and said he didn't know. The ways of widows 
are peculiar. How she found out all these things 
I don't know. She said that one of them came 
from New Jersey, one from Texas, one from Kan- 
sas, one was a sailor who happened not to be aboard 
the wrecked boat that fatal night. That one came 
from Timber alone. 

She knew that they got their meals in a house 
on the hill-side, and that by some sort of gymnastic 
twist they could put both feet over a long bench 
and pour their own coffee at the same time. She 
knew that one big red headed fellow stood on a 
slip of board stuck into the side of a tree 12 feet 
from the ground and sawed down a tree 200 feet 
high, that only shaved once a week; had a voice 
low and sweet, and he tamed baby chipmunks for 
pastime. The ways of widows are peculiar. 

The loggers told her that there were worms in 
the clam holes two feet long. That the govern- 
ment built the jetty to keep the Germans out, and 



-41- 



when she grew hysterical over the horses that were 
being taken down the bay on an open barge, and 
wringing her hands, cried, "Oh, are they going to 
take them across the bar on that open bark. Oh, 
they will be so frightened." "Will, they?" she 
asked. "Oh, no, calm yourself madam," the logger 
replied. "When they get to the bar they will 
shove them off and drag them over by their necks." 
The ways of loggers are peculiar. 

The day after we returned to the city the widow 
asked me to mail a letter. It was addressed to 
Timber. 

The United States is justly proud of her homes 
and schoolhouses, bridges, toys, closepins, her tele- 
phone poles and her rolling pins, her paper pulp 
her autos and machinery, but before any of this can 
be, we must go way back, back of the factory, of 
the sawmill, back of the log boom, climb the moun- 
tain and hunt up the logger. He, — his own individ- 
ual self must climb the swaying spring board 1 and 
saw down the mighty giants, he must buck and 
snipe and swamp, he must sling rigging, he must 
run the donkey engine, and drag that long brown 
log down, over, across, out on a long cable over 
the railroad kersplash ! into the bay. Great is the 
logger and barren are the hills he leaves behind him. 

I met a carpenter, just from Chicago. He told 
me the last work he did there was the inside 
finishing of a Chicago public school. It was finished 
with Oregon spruce. The company paid fifty-five 



-42- 



cents a hundred pounds freight on it, from Brigh- 
ton, Ore. to Chicago, 111., and I suspect that Bill 
loaded that car himself. 

When I climbed the mountain to find these log- 
gers in their lair, I found the top covered with a 
tiny round leaf and holding up a bunch of scarlet 
berries striped with gold and tiny white fragrant, 
star-shaped bloom no larger than a pin-head. Oh, 
tiny flower you are as great as the giant spruce, 
as great as the mountain or the everlasting sea, as 
great as the logger. You never say a word and 
the world does not know that you are here. I can- 
not describe you, any more than I can tell of the 
afterglow. The tiny flower, the red berry and the 
logger help to make the perfect whole. 



:•* % 






—43- 



CHAPTER IX. 

OUT ON THE RAGGED EDGE OF THINGS. 

Today I picked up on the beach a most beauteous 
thing, blue as topaz, bordered by a fairy fringe, 
its gelatinous body blue, shaded to violet. Standing 
erect over this oval is a white ribbed sail, like a 
woven basket, thin as tissue and transparent. It 
floats upon the salt water. I wonder if it knows 
that it is, it is so beautiful, so dainty, so perfect. 
It is too bad if it does not know of it. 

They told me you could stand in one place here 
in Brighton, and see the sky, the river, bay, the 
mountains, sand spit, the bar, the strand, the open 
sea — forever the surging sea. 

'Tis true, believe me. 

Brighton lies in a long line, a crumpled notched, 
and ruffled line, trimmed with rushes and salal, 
along the shore of Nehalem bay, may be a mile long, 
it reaches back into the hills as far as you can see, 
and each end runs into another place just like it. 

The hills and canyons are wild and look as though 
there might be all sorts of fearsome things abiding 
therein, but a man has surveyed, plotted or what- 
ever you call it, and sold lots there, and returned 
alive. 

There are people live in Brighton, nice quiet 
people ; they never hang around the saloon, nor go 
to church. There is no school or cemetery. They 



do not attend church for the reason there is none 
there, saloon ditto, school ditto. They have no 
need for a cemetery, people do not die there. When 
they depart they get drowned. It saves fuss and 
feathers. The waters mourn and the spruce chants 
their requiem. 

There are babies born there, and wavelets play 
upon the sand a' crooning lullaby, the blue jays 
shout in glee, and gorgeous wildflowers bestrew the 
pathway of their tiny feet. 

To the north is Mt. Neah-ka-nie, the old In- 
dian trail showing a golden thread against its bronze 
green side. No wonder the Indian held it sacred, it 
is so solemn, so still, so different from the other 
mountains. 

The white mist from the sea sometimes curtain 
it from view while unseen hands recolor its mighty 
wall. Now wind sprites pull the curtain down, 
sometimes threading them out in long slimsy 
strands wavering across the bay, sometimes they 
carry them entire into the hills beyond, and leave 
the mountain that was green, a purple pile, or gray 
with arabesque in browns, and while you watch 
in wonder it is turned by Nature's magic wand into 
a silhouette against a stardecked wall. 

Now, Nehalem bay is a long wide stretch of mud, 
the playground of the loons and long-legged, sol- 
emn cranes, something attracts your attention for 
a little while, and, lo! now it is a sea and ocean 
boats are sailing by. 

Water is indescribable; you may not give the 



—45- 



exact measurements of its surface ; you can only 
approximate its depth — its boundaries are varied, 
its color, — who may hint of its color? I may tell 
you it is blue and by the time you can adjust your 
eyes it is gray or green or black. Now it is a 
level surface, reflecting all the colors of the spec- 
trum, now lashed to fury by a flying wind, and 
its long curving waves are edged with a filligree 
of silver, now undulating coaxing swells, reaching, 
reaching, ever calling, ever carrying out to sea all 
that comes within reach of its long fingers. 

Across the bay is Nehalem spit, a long gray hand, 
ever pointing its gray finger at the treacherous bar. 
It is piled with wreckage of old ships and of small 
boats ; there they find the mysterious wax ; great 
logs are there buried in the sand. There must have 
been tidal waves sometime in the long ago that 
piled them there. 

Beyond, forever is the open sea, making wild 
dashes to cross the bar and enter the bay, ever 
warring with the sand. Always is the moan and 
sigh, the croonings and the laughter, the wild 
shriekings of the surf, and underneath its wild 
uproar, the little songs and wavelet cries, that you 
must go alone, and bend your ear closely that you 
may hear. 

They told me that I could have clams for break- 
fast, crab salad for lunch, and salmon for dinner, 
bear steak any time, venison according to law, roast 
wild duck and geese, of course. 

I was told of the birds, and there they are. Early 

—46— 



in the morning when the tide was out there were 
eagles, blue cranes and brown ones, loons, wild 
ducks, kingfishers ; later, around the shore, were 
all sorts of song birds, and humming birds, and 
millions of crows and seagulls, and in a sort of 
misty haze I saw the shadow of a stork. 

I see in the future a great hotel upon this moun- 
tain side, and floating wharves, and pleasure boats, 
and a labyrinth winding back among the hills, 
where you may wander and get lost a little, but just 
enough to make you feel deliciously creepy ; where 
city people, tired and worn, can pay good mazuma 
for all this. 

There are now graded streets, a sawmill, store 
and post office, and an appropriation for a school 
house. New houses are being built all the time. 

The pleasure of living is increased a hundred- 
fold, and the judicious buying and conscientious 
selling of the storekeeper has reduced the cost of 
living a quarter of a cent in Brighton. 

One morning I found the track of a coon, so I 
followed it, and there the little scoundrel was, with 
a clam ; he carefully washed it in a little fresh water 
stream, removed the shell, washed it again, and with 
almost human intelligence ate it alive. 

Now there were others digging clams there a 
little later, so I went along. Clams are born and 
grow to clamhood in one place, and if you disturb 
them they send up a little spout of water and settle 
down in their little cellar. They believe that all 



-47— 



things come to those who wait, and they know 
where to wait. 

One of the clamdiggers was a large, capable- 
looking woman; she looked as though she could 
do anything she wished to. After prodding about 
a little in the mud, she sat down upon a mossy rock 
and howled, according to the advice of one Jere- 
miah, long since deceased. She spread her two feet 
to view. "This is a mighty costly outing for me," 
she said, "a four dollar pair of shoes, twenty-cent 
carfare, skirt all mud, waist the same, and here 
is the shovel broken, a borrowed one, fifty cents, 
and no clams, no clams, no clams !" The loons 
took up the cry. Sounds never die on the seashore, 
and if I go there a hundred years from now I know 
I will hear the argent waves singing that refrain. 

The rest of the party gathered, dug and scratched 
out clams, and then more clams. I dug clams with 
nurses, milliners, sweet high school girls, merchants, 
loggers, republicans and sinners, but I have not yet 
had the pleasure of digging clams with an adventist. 

I think people are like clams, they dislike being up- 
lifted. One woman out there in the woods sent for 
me one day because she said Tom most always 
got drunk and was late getting the doctor at such 
times when she needed him the most. "Mercy," 
I said, "does he do that ! Mercy ! mercy !" "Yes," 
she drawled, "I hate it awful." "Well," I said, "I 
wouldn't have this happen again." "Yes, I hate 
that, too, but if you will stay until he comes it will 



-48— 



~ 



be all right/' It was a girl — that was the fourth; 
four more women to be emancipated against their 
will. 

Another one told me that she had lived there 
five years and had never been to the beach, because 
her man didn't think it was a proper place for 
women. Oh, well, some clams spout when you 
disturb them, and some don't, and that's all there 
is to it. 

Today I crossed the bay and waded the white 
sand on the spit, and came out upon the beach 
where the surf beats over the hulk of the German 
ship Mimi. I suppose that old Canute would have 
ordered the surf back. He wasn't there. I wonder 
what Jesus would have done, he that poured oil 
on the troubled waters. The Sea of Galilee was 
only about as large as Nehalem bay. I know that 
he would have stood beside the widow who brought 
down dry shoes for the husband who never came 
ashore, and spoke gently to her. He would look, 
oh ! so kindly at the little browned woman, who laid 
a wreath of wild peabloom upon the casket of the 
only sailor who was washed ashore, unknown, and 
friendless in that wild place. I will never see 
the wild pea in all its tangled beauty but I will 
think of that strange funeral there among the tow- 
ering forest trees ! 

I went into the store one evening — now, a country 
store is an institution. There the storekeeper, with 
his head under the counter, was digging out a pound 



49- 



of prunes and answering questions at the same time. 
The store is a post office, ticket office, and ice cream 
parlor, and they hold church in it. In comes Red 
or Blue, I have forgotten the name, and blandly in- 
quires, "how much is a ticket to Lake County." 
"Well, I don't know," says the storekeeper, "but I 
will find out for you tomorrow." In the lifetime of 
some of Oregon's citizens Lake County had no defi- 
nite boundaries. I think it has now. 

On the beach I watched the ships sail by; there 
are ships that pass in the day, and they leave no trail 
upon the blue-green turnpike ; they make no rumble 
or roar ; there are no crossing bells to jar your aching 
nerves; and boats that carry a whole village pass 
as silently as a thistle down, and fade away into the 
horizon, that blue line that is not there. 

Sitting silently in the shelter of an old log I saw 
two bald eagles settle down upon the sand. I held 
my breath, they were so close to me. One raised 
himself with his wide wings and with incredibly 
swift motion pounced upon a snow white gull. The 
eagle is a part of the well-appointed whole; he is 
harmonious, he is still, his attitude is correct, so is 
the gull's. 

He tore the gull's warm body and spilled its blood 
upon the sand, then slowly rose and carried it to his 
babes sheltered in the curving arm of a mighty fir. 
A long sliding wave came forth from the edge of 
the sea and removed all trace of the scarlet from the 
sand. 

Two little downy gulls waited long for their sup- 
per ; the cold night came on, and no mother's warm 
breast hovered them. In the morning their little 
necks and legs were stretched out long and cold. 

I am glad I saw the eagles. It is not every day 

—50— 



that you can sit so close to a wild eagle that you can 
count the feathers on his neck. 

I remember in Portland' last summer there was a 
great convention of some sort. Lucile's mother was 
a widow ; she was well to do, she held a position, and 
Lucile was to take part in this great doings. Now, 
this mother was calm, well poised, held the right 
attitude. 

Mary's mother was a widow. Mary was to go 
and see the parade. Mary's mother washed; she 
washed for Lucile's mother. Lucile's mother was 
generous and kind to her. Mary's mother was an 
attribute of the whole. 

As Lucile's mother dressed her for this great 
parade, she remarked that "a dollar and a half was 
an awful price to pay for hair ribbons, but Lucile's 
hair was such a rare shade, etc., etc. 

"No Mary, darling, I couldn't get you the shoes ; 
you will have to stay at home. Lucile's mother 
couldn't spare me my pay today. Don't cry, darling." 

It will take a mighty wave to wash away this 
stain. 

I am glad I saw the parade — ten thousand chil- 
dren, wearing flowers and bearing banners, our 
own red, white and blue. 

This morning early I met a hand from the mill. 
"Are you not working this morning," I asked. "No," 
he said, "I quit this morning; it took up so much 
of my time." I chatted away, then I noticed that 
he was casting anxious glances down the beach, 
and I caught a glimpse of scarlet sweaters, big hats, 
and bare feet. I kept him just as long as I could, 
but he broke away, and started on in a swift little 
jog just as the red sweaters rounded Fisher's Point. 

It seems that the bill to repeal human nature ha? 
not yet taken effect. 



-51— 



CHAPTED X. 
NEHALEM. 

After the P. R. & N. R. R. took ten cents away 
from us, they let us ride on a little tin car fitted 
with portholes, as far as Wheeler. 

Wheeler is as spick-span new, and prim as a little 
girl in a pink pinafore and sunbonnet. New saw- 
mill, new hotel, new houses, new walks. Men grad- 
ing down the hillside so steep that they work up 
'till dinner time and then slide down; after dinner 
they work up until six o'clock and slide down to 
supper. It will be terraced and bungalows will be 
built, homes for the men who will work in the 
mill. 

Now we walked down a little gangway and 
boarded a little launch, Juanita; it took us across 
the bay to Nehalem. We were out for a frolic. 
We were going to wait until tomorrow before we 
worried about today. We had two small boys in the 
party, and you know they always help some. After 
we had turned around three times and then sat 
down, some men brought down and put aboard a 
long and narrow box ; it was one of those boxes 
that make you think of tomorrow in spite of your- 
self. 

The small boy swung himself out over the water, 
and we thought again of tomorrow. 

Oh, that kid ! he wanted to sit where the fat 
man sat, and no other place would do, and he step- 
ped on the lady from Eugene, and he threw a piece 
of pie at his mother. "Braced right up to his 
mother," the other boy told me. I would have 
liked to have seen the severe lady, alone with that 

—52— 



boy five minutes. I think there would have been 
an active engagement, that would have interested 
that whole boatload. 

With whistle and fuss like a real steamer, the 
Juanita squared around to the wharf and there 
were were in Nehalem. 

The village leans up against the hills in a loving, 
trustful way, old Neah-kan-ni sheltering her from 
the sea, and reaches his arm around to keep away 
the encroaching sand. All is quiet and homey in 
Nehalem. 

There is a fish cannery there and a cheese factory, 
a department store, and kindly obliging people, and 
they visit with you. You tell the druggist about 
the boil on Tom's knee, and you feel as though 
you had just run across the street with your dish 
apron on. 

As we stroll about among the homes it seems as 
though grandma will come down the dahlia-bordered 
path, in her big gathered apron, her specks poised 
on top of her head, and a handful of clovepinks 
for me and ginger cookies for the boys, — and you 
will go in and sit on the stoop and she will tell 
you all about the mysterious Nehalem wax. How 
the ship came into the bay for water and was 
wrecked on the bar going out, and her load of bees- 
wax was cast upon the sand. One man was saved, 
and he made friends with the Indians. All day 
he watched from Neah-kan-ni for a ship, all day, 
every day, for forty years, and then a ship sailed 
by and paid no attention to his signal. And they 
do say that the Indian women who cooked for him 
loved him and cared for him tenderly. He died of 
a broken heart. Then she carved copies of some 
writings he left her on the rocks, and great chunks 



■53— 



of the wax, hoping that sometime, some of his peo- 
ple would find it and understand. They have found 
it, far-away maiden of the hills, but the}- do not 
understand. 

And then we forget today and tomorrow both, 
and we wonder about the ship, and the man and 
the wax, of the Indian maiden who loved him, of the 
strange hieroglyphics on the rocks. Oh Spanish 
romance ! Oh golden sea ! Oh vanquished redman ! 

And some way we think of a locked chamber, in 
the days of our childhood, where they kept our 
mother's things. They showed us the lacy white 
things and the shawl, and best silk, her jewels ; but 
our mother, her voice, her smile, her features, what 
were they like? 

Nehalem will always be like this, for it is so 
sheltered, and the railroad passed her by. People 
will go there to live, though ; they can't help it ; and 
the tourists will bide awee. 

As I said, we forgot today and tomorrow both, 
but only a little while, for the boy brought us back 
with a jerk. It is a good thing we had both of 
those boys with us, otherwise I am afraid that we 
would have started out on a war of extermination 
of boys, but the older one was such a manly little 
fellow that he balanced the thing. Boys are some- 
thing to be studied, but it is useless to form an 
opinion of them, for you will have to change it in 
ten minutes. 

This one, the older one, is a royal spender. He 
bought a purse for a nickle to keep his other 
nickles safe, then spent all of them in five minutes. 

I have another little boy friend; his father is a 
Jewish gentlemen of wide proportion. I made a 



—54- 



ball for the small chap. "Now, sir," I said, "it 
will cost you fifty cents an hour for my work/' He 
stretched himself up 'till he was nearly as high as 
my chair, reached for the ball, and sweetly asked, 
"You couldn't do it for 35 cents, could you?" 
These three boys will be men at the same time the 
unemancipated woman's little girls will be women, 
and I find myself wondering about tomorrow today, 
which I shouldn't according to New Thought. 

Then again, there is Moroney Town. Just roll 
that name around awhile, with Brighton, Manhat- 
tan, Rockaway, Bay View. Don't it make you think 
of a pensive island, green and far away? 

Don't you imagine it is a little town, between 
two little lakes, and a little river running past hid- 
den by tall reeds and bubbling mountain streams 
coming down from sheltering hills on one side, and 
just over a ridge high enough to keep off the wind 
is the sea? Can you believe that the water in the 
little lakes is fresh and there are trout dwelling 
therein and waterlilies floating. 

There is an old man who has lived there longer 
than any other man except one. He says this 
proudly, and with a little, just a little, rolling sound 
in his voice, that makes you think of St. Patrick's 
day. He has a little leaky boat, and he takes you 
out in this and rows all about these little lakes, and 
the water is so warm and shallow and still, you don't 
care if you do fall in. 

Can you imagine a little garden back of the lake 

—55— 



with superb vegetables and fruit trees, growing in 
land that has never been plowed ? Can you imagine 
this old man platting and selling off this land for 
homes where anyone can make a fortune raising 
fruit and poultry, vegetables, asparagus, bees? 
Verily, it is a paradise for bees. It is there just 
the same, the prettiest spot on the whole shore, and 
different from all the rest. The railroad folders 
tell you of all the rest, a solid row of towns the 
whole length of the beach, strand and sea on one 
side, then the railroad, then a string of fresh water 
lakes, then the mountains. 

An automobile road is under construction right 
along between the lakes and the sea. It is the finest 
place to bathe in the whole world. You take a dip 
in the sea and almost freeze to death, and just when 
your toes begin to curl up, you run out and warm 
yourself on the sand, then covered with sand until 
you are as gritty as a bulldog, you skip over to 
the little lake and take a good old-fashioned bath, 
warm and soapy, wash the sand off and go back 
to your room warm and clean. 

While I was roaming around these places I met 
many people. I told them I had a cottage at Brigh- 
ton. When I am in Brighton I tell the storekeeper 
to send the stuff down to my shack. Summer re- 
sorters seem to naturally fall into these ways. I 
w r asn't far enough away from home though, to make 
it stick. Oh, well, what is the difference? Shack 
or tent or cottage or hollow stump ; there is no 
place like this to spend awhile, to loaf and eat, to 
rind out how small you are, and how great is Tilla- 
mook beach. 



-56- 



CHAPTER XL 
CHEESE. 

I have a long strand of memory gems and yes- 
terday I added thereto a beautiful pendant, a 
charm, the center and most valued of the whole 
collection, it is golden and solid, none of your 
rolled plate affairs, it was given me by the busi- 
ness men of Tillamook, and it is made of cheese, 
wonderful Tillamook cheese. 

I had rather be a salesman for Tillamook cheese 
than to hold any other position in the United States. 
Are you from Missouri? Then I will show you. 
In the first place, it is a perfect article. 

When you have a golden cube of it served with 
your apple pie, just try and remember some of 
the great things back here in Tillamook county 
that must come to pass before this delectable 
cube may be served to your order. 

There must be great green meadows, great 
clover fields, there must be the tender grasses of 
the mountain side. There must be great herds of 
sleek cows sniffing the glorious air, sea salted. 
There must be sanitary barns, pretty girls and 
brawny brown men to care for and milk the cows. 
There must be slender legged horses and steady 
drivers to tote the milk to the factory in the early 
morning. 

Then, back of the factory, with all its perfect 
appointments of vats, and hoops, its boiler and 



-57- 



system of hot and cold water, its ventilation and 
drainage, its white-capped pleasant men to manage 
and order it all. Back of this is the Co-operative 
Association, solid and sure. We watched the milk 
carefully strained into huge vats, almost big enough 
to live in, and gradually by some means scientific 
but mysterious, it gradually changed into a solid 
golden mass, was cut into small squares and salted 
and drained, men stirred and lifted it, until it was 
pronounced just right, packed into hoops, banked 
up on shelves, wrapped tenderly in white cheese- 
cloth ; after cooling three days it is dipped in melted 
parafine — and again laid up on long snowy shelves. 
There it remains until its appointed day, and is then 
a dish fit to set before a king. 

Now the salesman can say that he has the best, 
that he knows it's prepared in a cleanly manner, 
from feeding the clover to the cow to loading the 
white spruce boxes on the boat or car. 

That it is an ideal, nourishing food that no blood 
was shed to produce it, that its manufacture gives 
employment to hundred's of people from the tiny 
lad that "drives up the cow from the pasture" to 
the salesman. 

That the profits that accrue go back to the pro- 
ducer and build homes and schools and good roads. 

He can say that the success of the Tillamook 
cheese industry is the practical working out of the 
socialistic ideal of co-operation, and that it has 
been brought about without the aid of a soap box 

—58— 



orator, or of any society's ranting agitator, but 
by the cool "United States" brand of business abil- 
ity of the men and women of Tillamook county, 
under Republican and Democratic administration, 
under the red, white and blue, star-spangled banner. 
Hurrah for Tillamook county! 

He can say that the recipients of the money 
and the glory of this achievement are well clothed, 
well fed and happy, that they live an out-of-door 
life. 

One of the 23 factories uses 20,000 pounds of 
milk per day ; that will make about 2000 pounds of 
cheese. The whole of the milk is used, cream and 
all, fresh from the farm every morning. 

Just try to visualize this amount of milk, put 
up in pint bottles, and spread upon the Portland 
porches at 8 cents per quart, and then figure up 
how much you would have left if you paid the bill, 
and then figure up that amount for 365 days in 
the year and multiply it by the 23 factories, or try 
to think how big a stack of sandwiches the 2000 
pounds, the product of one day, would make. I 
haven't tried it myself; it makes me dizzy. 

Now, they tell me there is room for and need 
of four times as many cows, four times as many 
men and women to care for them, four times as 
much money invested, four times as much cheese 
can be made. 

And the valleys are smiling and the hills are 
waiting, the genial climate and the sea are call- 



—59 



ing, and the people are waiting for you, and the 
table is all ready spread for your entertainment. 

Make some sandwiches like this for a lunch, 
pack them in waxed paper, take the train or boat, 
or auto,, or foot trail and come and see for your- 
self: 

Take one-half pound of Tillamook cheese, 1 
green pepper, remove the seeds and veins. Chop 
fine, then run the cheese and pepper through the 
fine grinder of the food chopper, season with salt, a 
dash of paprika, and spread on thin slices of whole 
wheat bread. 

Tillamook City is the county seat, and therefore 
bristles with important things. Of course, the 
court house, two newspapers, homelike hotels and 
restaurants, and the most courteous people I ever 
met. 

Tillamook City is an intaglio set down deep in 
a frame of green hills. It is impossible to give 
any idea of it. You may say that a certain man's 
hair "looks like a mop." At once you see your 
friend going about with some old rag on his head, 
instead of his pretty red hair. 

You cannot say that Tillamook looks like Chi- 
cago. It don't. You cannot say that it looks like 
Cornelius. It don't. It looks just like Tillamook, 
and so there you are. 

Level, fine streets, cement walks, schools and 
churches. The children have to go to school, 



-60— 



whether they will or no. Grown people can go 
to church if they wish, but if they stay at home no- 
body knows anything about it. Everybody in Tilla- 
mook is minding his own business, and he has 
plenty to do. 

If Moses had lived in this century he would 
have added one more Commandment, and it would 
have been : "Mind your own business, for the Lord's 
sake." Come to think of it, he would have left 
out all the rest, so thoroughly does this cover the 
ground. 

You might say that Tillamook is a fine place 
for a home, that there is an opportunity there, one 
to a block for a great many men and women. That 
there is cubic miles of ozone; many linear feet of 
smiles. There is. And with your cheese, you may 
have fruit and fish, potatoes and salt, a house to 
live in, boat rides, auto rides over the finest roads 
in the country. You may have anything you want 
— it is there. 

Finally, you can truthfully say, that the only way 
you can thoroughly appreciate it, is to visit it your- 
self. 

The residents of Tillamook are at home. 

^Published in the Tillamook Headlight. 



—61- 



CHAPTER XII. 

A SONG. 

Long ago Emerson said, "Oregon and Texas 
are yet unsung." 

The Morning Oregonian says we must have a 
scribe to write of our autos and flying machines, 
and such. 

And the Poet of Dallas, 

"When they come they will chant us the pity 
of the mill and the moan and the mine." Oh, 
fudge ! The greatest poem has been written, and 
its title is Oregon. It is written on the face of 
the earth by the hand that holds the universe in its 
palm. 

No human pen can write a proper poem of Ore- 
gon. Imagine a goddess on Mt. Hood. Just think 
of our loggers hobnobbing with a woodland sylph, a 
Casca Bianca of today, if he was only five years 
old, would have taken his peanuts and got off of 
that burning ship, and his mother would have rated 
him soundly for not bringing the captain home to 
supper. 

Solomon could never think of the Shulamite if 
he should see an Oregon woman picking hops. 
David would never lie down in green pastures; he 
would have had energy enough in this invigorating 
climate to busy himself buying another pasture, and 
more sheep or angora goats. 

—62— 



We have poems, lots of them, man-made, too. 
The Forestry building in Portland is a poem with 
the bark on. It is written in the meter of the square 
and plumb line. It is the wonder of the world ; it 
could not have been written anywhere else. 

The forests of fir and spruce are Psalms forever 
chanting. 

The rivers and lakes and mountain streams are 
lyrics. 

The hills and valleys, the moonlight on the bay, 
the sunlight on the sea, the sunrise on the moun- 
tain top. The glow and glint and sparkle of the 
sunset, weaving gold and silver threads into the 
edges of the day, and beading the rim of night with 
pearls : all these are sonnets. 

The sea, the wide, wild sea, a psalter. We have 
poets among our people, too. The captain of the 
little tug that put a buoy on treacherous Nehalem 
bar is a poet. 

The logger that cuts down those great spruce 
trees in the day and tames baby chipmunks in the 
evening is a poet. 

The plain little woman that placed a wreath of 
wild pea upon the casket of the unknown sailor, 
is a poetess. 

The one S. Benson that placed thirty brass foun- 
tains, and upon each brass fountain on the four sides 
thereof a brass spigot, that bubbles, bubbles sweet 
and clean water, that has been brought down from 
the melting crystals of Mt. Hood's mighty crest— 

—63— 



placed them in the city of Portland where thous- 
ands of people quench their thirst — the black man 
and the dainty maiden side by side ; the unfortunate, 
upon whom the sins of his fathers have been visited, 
may drink without danger of contaminating the 
dimpled babe, whose mother holds him that he may 
"swallow a bubble" — this man is a poet. 

They live out here, because of it. They are so 
big, and do such big things, they must live where 
they can breathe and stretch themselves. And like 
the sea that roars, and mouths great ships, then 
spews them out upon the sands, that ever beats 
upon the rocks and cannot be controlled, yet throws 
up from its mighty silent heart, and lays gently at 
your feet, a piece of perfect, pink and purple sea- 
weed, that your slightest touch destroys, so these 
great men and women build great and mighty for 
the race to come, and awe you with their energy, 
yet breathe a song of love and rest and peace, right 
from their silent tender hearts. 

Yes, Oregon is a poem, and saw and hammer, 
hoe, needle and loom keep time to its rythmic swing. 

In the cities you may have the rag-time, in the 
mountains the chants, on the sea the requiems, and 
everywhere the martial strains, and Oregon is 
marching on. 



—64- 



POST SCRIPT 

P. S. Oh, I forgot something, so I 
must call your attention to Mr. Moroney's 
Cranberry lands; they lie right along the 
Railroad, and can be flooded at any season. 
God has arranged that. 

Only 16 miles to Tillamook South, 
and all the towns on the P. R. & N. to the 
great city of Portland East, are waiting 
markets. 

There is no timber, nothing but grass 
to clear. 

Mr. Moroney will sell you 5-10-20 acres 
or more of this land. You can carry the 
price in your vest pocket and give him half 
of it. You will have to hire the Express 
Company to carry your product to market 
and a bank to handle your profits. 

Ask Michael Moroney. 
Rockaway, 
Tillamook County, Oregon. 



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